


The Birthday Job

by little mouse (lcwilkie)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Birthday, Multi, Post-Canon, just some domestic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:15:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24725872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lcwilkie/pseuds/little%20mouse
Summary: A short bit of domestic fluff between the OT3, because Parker has likely never had a real birthday before and neither Hardison nor Eliot will miss a chance to give her copious amounts of chocolate and love.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 9
Kudos: 68





	The Birthday Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zahnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zahnie/gifts).



“What?” Eliot asked, interrupting Hardison’s briefing after Parker’s comment.

Rather than be annoyed, Hardison also stopped his lecture and leaned his hands on the table.

“What do you mean, twenty-seven?” Eliot continued, looking at Parker. “When we did that elephant sanctuary job, you said you were twenty-six.”

“That was three months ago, Eliot. I had a birthday.”

Eliot and Hardison looked at each other. “Babe, you never told us it was your birthday. And, and you know, _you know_ I try not pry or ask about your past cause you’re not a mark, and you deserve some privacy and all, but…Parker, why didn’t you tell us?” Hardison asked.

Parker looked between the two, now looking at her with concern. “What? Why’s it a big deal? It’s just a marker of getting older, nothing special. It’s not like Christmas, when you get chocolate and presents and stuff.” Motioning with her hand at the screen behind Hardison, she asked “Can we just...go back to the info on the mark?”

“In a second,” Hardison said, while Eliot still sat beside Parker looking slightly baffled. “I mean, did you never celebrate your birthday before?”

“No? I mean, maybe once or twice with foster families, but I was in and out so often I never kept track. And usually it was just hand-me-down things from other people’s real kids, and I never was in one place long enough to have enough friends for an actual party. It’s not a big deal. It’s just some cake and boxes to open and some decorations. Why is this such a big deal?” At this point, both Hardison and Eliot could tell she was bothered by not only the questioning, but the implication that something about her was inherently wrong, and bothersome to _them_.

“Well….it doesn’t have to be, Parker, if you don’t want it to be, but….we...well, usually you do celebrate birthdays with the people you love. Or at least get dinner or something.” Eliot chimed in.

“Oh. Well, it’s over now, and now you know it’s in May, so can we…” She paused and cleared her through, “just, get on with the con?”

Hardison glanced at Eliot once more. “Yeah, sure, babe. Uh, okay, so, Johnny boy here has three houses will full cleaning staff, that don’t interact, so I think that’s our way in.”

Eliot and Hardison made eye contact, with a very clear signal of “we’ll talk about this later,” before focusing on the job at hand.

* * *

It was rainy and cold outside, as usual for November, and Parker was still slightly fuming that she’d drawn the short straw to pick up the props needed for the next con. Who knew how hard it would be to find a blank statue of an air hockey table? She’d spent most of the afternoon checking pawn shops, thrift stores, and party stores after Hardison said he refused to bulk order them for the con.

When she got back to the pub, loaded down with bags, all she wanted was a bowl of Eliot’s tomato soup and maybe a bubble bath, followed by a cuddle. If there were this many cars in the parking lot, though, Eliot would likely be in the pub making sure they weren’t understaffed, and it was Wednesday, so Hardison would be playing with his elf friends for _hours_. Oh well, at least the bubble bath was a possibility. She was still thinking about how much of the bottle she could dump into the tub before Eliot scolded her for flooding the bathroom with bubbles (even though he had admitted later that having her walk out in nothing _but_ bubbles made it worth it) when she got to the outside door. They tried to avoid brining con supplies through the pub itself.

She knew what her boys would be up to, so was most definitely not expecting to open the door onto a crowd of people yelling “Surprise!”

 _Fight-flight-freeze_ were the options when startled, and Parker went for “freeze”. Then she looked around. There was Nate, and Sophie, and Maggie, and Tara, and Archie, and Hurley, and Josie, and Amy, and about a dozen more people she knew, and could call “friend.”

There were also balloons, and streamers, and a pinata. And what looked like a stack of presents off to one side in shiny paper with ribbons and bows. Some people, who knew Parker exceptionally well, had wrapped their presents with locks that had to be picked before the paper could be taken off.

Hardison walked out of the crowed, holding a helium balloon shaped like a giant chocolate cake, with the words “Happy Birthday” on it in bright yellow. Eliot followed him and took the bags from Parker’s limp hands.

“But…it’s not my birthday,” she managed to get out, while Hardison tied string of the balloon onto her wrist. He bent to kiss her cheek.

“It’s your un-birthday. Six months from your actual,” he whispered in her ear.

“According to the Mad Hatter, your un-birthday is any day that’s not your actual birthday,” she whispered back.

“Yeah, but this was a convenient date to remember,” Eliot grinned, walking back from dropping the bags off in the bedroom, and kissing her other cheek. He reached out and took the hand that didn’t have a balloon, and led her into the room, where everyone had started socializing, knowing Parker hated to be the center of attention.

“Does…that mean the boxes are for me?” She whispered quickly, before reaching the crowd.

Eliot laughed. “Yeah, sweetheart, they’re yours. So’s the cake.” He motioned to the smaller table beside the presents, where there was a two-layer cake and a platter of cupcakes resting. The cake was pale blue, with sparkly diamonds and gems scattered on the fondant, and the cupcakes had green frosting and little candy money bills on top.

“Can we have the cake now?”

“It’s your party, babygirl, you can do whatever you want,” Hardison told her.

Slightly overwhelmed, she reached over to hug Hardison, the Eliot, then, since he was close by, Nate. She was smiling widely now, and looked around once more, before laughing and running around to hug everyone in the room. Eliot and Hardison fist bumped watching the balloon bob along behind her until she came flying back to launch herself into Eliot’s arms.

“Cake now,” she told everyone assembled, and clambered down to skip over to the table.

Grabbing the knife beside the cake, she reached out to make the first cut.

“Hold on, now,” Hardison told her, reaching out to stop her.

“You said it was my cake!”

“And it is, but give me just one second here,” he told her, and pulled the pack of candles on the table towards him while Eliot handed Parker the crème brulee torch. Hardison carefully put candles on the top of the cake, and Parker excitedly turned the torch up to full to light them.

Smiling, Nate grabbed the camera, and since no one, especially Parker, was big on waiting for a whole song to finish before being able to eat cake, quickly snapped a picture of her, smiling, with Eliot on one side of her and Hardison on the other.

“Make a wish, Parker,” called.

“Why? I already have everything I want,” she called, before blowing out the candles. “As long as I get to smash the pinata and open the boxes, that is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yay, a party for Parker! I tried to keep it relatively short cause i'm rewatching the show with a friend, and as we all know, First Season Parker and Last Season Parker are wildly different, and I wasn't sure i could get last-season Parker right while watching First Season....but oh well! Either way, she gets a party.


End file.
